Overcasters survive crash, get added to SXSW lineup

Overcasters, the promising new outfit led by Kurt Ottaway, just returned from a pair of shows on the East Coast with the Fluid. While the shows were awesome, from the sounds of it, the band was fortunate to have made it there in one piece. As the band was passing through Joliet, Illinois, in route to New Jersey for the first show in Hoboken, the band's van hit a patch of ice and ended up in a ravine. Miraculously every emerged from the accident unscated. According to Ottaway, the experience was pretty harrowing. The wreck forced the outfit to drive with cardboard and duct tape placed over several of the windows, which were blown out on impact. And the outside temperature at the time was seventeen degrees below zero, which caused spider cracks to form on Erin Tidwell's drums. Thankfully, the band made it to the show, but ended up having to play the set on borrowed equipment. The weather should be far more bearable next month when the group heads to Austin for the city's annual South By Southwest music festival, to which they were just invited. Congrats and Godspeed.